Jornal Overview and Citation Practices

4500 words & 15 sources
For my paper I need to do more primary research. I would say I amgoing to need roughly ten sources to create a solid paper. The more information I collect, the better.

I chose the Elon Journal for Undergraduate Research in Communications. The subjects written about were easily recognized, which made it easier to select a topic.
The Portrayal of the American Legal System in Prime Time Television Crime Dramas
This article dissected numerous television crime dramas and explained how the show was accurate or inaccurate in presenting the legal process and trial length. The author studied the fourth and seventh episodes (because middle of season episodes are not usually as over the top as beginning and final episodes) of The Good Wife, Law & Order SVU, Fairly Legal, and Major Crimes. In the journal, the author acknowledges how many different studies have been conducted on the effect on jury’s, through watching CSI. It is what makes this journal unique.

“Through this study, it can be concluded primetime television crime dramas portray suspects’ treat-ment fairly accurately, as the majority of the studied episodes showed police officers, detectives or interviewers professionally interviewing suspects. Additionally, the overwhelming majority of interviewers did not physi¬cally harass suspects in the questioning room. However, because many of the episodes included instances where innocent suspects were presumed guilty, there seems to be a disconnect between the fair treatment of suspects and the guilty statuses police officers, detectives or interviewers assign to them.

This contradiction relates back to the literature, which states, “In the case of innocent suspects, one would hope that investiga¬tors would periodically reevaluate their beliefs. Over the years, however, a good deal of research has shown that once people form an impression, they unwittingly seek, interpret and create behavioral data that verify it.” It seems that although police officers, detectives and interviewers in television programs ask questions politely, they rarely reevaluate their initial impressions of suspects, which in turn results in several wrongful detainments.”

In the first sentence the author is wrapping up her study by sourcing instances is the show. Her criteria for evaluating the show included suspects’ treatment, the case building process and trial length. In the following sentences, she goes on to state how most of the shows presented realistic situations in treatment of suspects, but due to the fact of presuming people guilty to quickly it produces unlikely trial processes.
The author throughout the article cites numerous sources to give her research credibility. She explains her reasoning for every decision that is made in her research so you can understand it completely. The author put in the work to make her research credible and believable.

Definition Practices

I have chosen the article “User Generated Content vs. Advertising: Do consumers trust the world of others over advertisers”. This article is written by Katherine A. Mackinnon. In the article she is talking about how people view user generated content. This brings us into the first time that Katherine defines a word. When she defines what user generated content she uses the sustained definition approach. To explain user generated content she says the following, “UGC is defined by Wunsch-Vincent and Vickery as having three parts: “i) Content made publicly available over the internet, ii) content which reflects a ‘certain amount of creative effort,’ and iii) content which is ‘created outside of professional routines and practices’” (2006). The highlight of the definition is that the content is created outside of professional routines and practices. The study also found that UGC is being produced and shared at very high rates, especially with younger people. “It was found that 35% of all U.S. internet users, and 51% of users under the age of 30, have posted content on the internet at some point”. Here the author is defining what UGC means and how Wunsch-Vincent and Vikery define it. While doing this she is setting up how she wants the viewer views the concept of User Generated Content.

Katherine also defines a term in a very similar way later in the paper. She talks about a new technology called Apriori. To describe she says, “This application for smart phones allows users to connect their phones with reviews for specific products. Users simply scan a barcode on the product into their cell phone and are immediately linked to a database of reviews for that product (2009). The application requires the presence of a moderator, who would ensure that all reviews are accurate and legitimate”. This time instead of using some researchers to describe the term she uses her own knowledge.

There is one main difference in how she describes these two terms. When she describes UGC she is saying what she has found from researchers. She also goes more in-depth into this term. Since UGC is a very important part of the paper it is very important that the reader understands it. As oppose to Apriori, she gives a technical definition. She does not describe what Apriori does, but more how the user will use the app.

Style of Dense Passages

Framing the Soviet Athlete in American Media by Sam Calvert

Passage 1: Sports and politics go hand-in-hand, mirroring each other in the ways they show the human character, institutional relations and the ideology behind those relations. By pitting team against team, as politics often does with political parties, countries or sets of allies, it ultimately gives sports a relationship with politics in the most inherent way. The two institutions, sport and politics, are inseparable, and the connection is unavoidable.

Rewrite: Sports and politics emulate each other because they bring out peoples true character. They both put “teams”, against each other and do whatever they can to win. The two institutions connection is unavoidable.

Passage 2: Many scholars have argued that the typical mass media outlet has tended to convey the ideology of the nation in which it reports and has extended to political and economical realms, which in the case of the United States, has meant showing things that related to America first. Dai also noted that media coverage has related to the news interest of the state in which it is being shown, and thus the Olympic coverage in the United States has related to the country as a whole. The mass media also has been found to be ethnocentric in coverage, and so it has focused on the country to which it catered. Billings and Angelini described U.S. media coverage of the Olympics as “un¬abashedly American,” used to strengthen the country’s sense of self-importance in the world.

Rewrite: The United States mass media has been said by scholars to highlight things that are related to America first and foremost. The Olympic Games are covered and built toward boosting Americans thoughts towards themselves. All the while, portraying the idea that Americans are better than everyone else.

Passage 3: Guttman argued that the subtle idea that the Games were a chance to show superiority over the Soviets pervaded throughout the media coverage of the Olympics during the Cold War. Several scholars have suggested that the media chose to show American superiority by emphasizing American sportsmanship and highlighting the medal count, which Hill found to have interested the United States’ public mainly because it wanted to see America defeat the Soviets, not because it cared about the athletes or the sports.

Rewrite: Guttman claimed the Olympic Games were the chance to America’s superiority to the Soviets through the media. Scholars have suggested the media chose to mainly focus on sportsmanship and the medal count just to re-emphasize the superiority of the U.S.

Response: All the passages tended to reiterate a fact more than once, so it only made sense to simplify it. Some of the ways she described the media coverage were too long and easily could have been made shorter, but were not, I assume to add length to her paper and seem more scholarly.

General Academic Style

One article studied the lyrics of Hip-Hop and how it degrades women, and the other studies childhood obesity in the United States. Both articles are straight to the point by citing sources. They use phrases like, “especially apparent” and “important problem” to stress their arguments. I would say they do not use nominal style in their writing because it is not ambiguous. The “discursive I” is not apparent in these passages.

“This study examined the culture of rap/hip-hop music and how misogynistic lyrical messages influ-enced listeners’ attitudes toward intimate partner violence. Adams and Fuller (2006) define misogyny as the “hatred or disdain of women” and “an ideology that reduces women to objects for men’s ownership, use, or abuse” (p. 939). Popular American hip-hop and rap artists, such as Eminem, Ludacris and Ja Rule, have increasingly depicted women as objects of violence or male domination by communicating that “submission is a desirable trait in a woman” (Stankiewicz & Rosselli, 2008, p. 581). These songs condone male hegemony in which “men find the domination and exploitation of women and other men to be not only expected, but actu¬ally demanded” (Prushank, 2007, p. 161). Thus, these messages glorify violence against women, including rape, torture and abuse, and foster an acceptance of sexual objectification and degradation of women (Russo & Pirlott, 2006). These misogynistic themes first emerged in rap/hip-hop songs in the late 1980s and are es¬pecially apparent today with women being portrayed as sex objects and victims of sexual violence (Adams & Fuller, 2006; Russo & Pirlott, 2006).”

“Children in the United States are growing, and although we may want them to grow taller, they are also growing wider. Over the past 30 years, childhood obesity prevalence has tripled in the United States (Yaqubi, 2011). According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey taken in 2008, approxi¬mately half (50.1%) of our youth ages 2-19 were considered obese (Yaqubi, 2011). These alarming numbers are due in part to an overall decrease in physical activity and an increase in unhealthy eating habits. Children spend countless sedentary hours consuming entertainment media and eating more than ever before. Childhood obesity is an important problem to address because adolescent obesity can lead to serious health and self-esteem problems later in life.”

Knowledge-Making Cues

For this Wiki Post I chose the article, “Visual Persuasion: The Media’s Use of Images in Framing People Groups” by Caitlin O’Donnell. This article analyzes on the media portrays certain races and cultures from the early 1800s through the late 1900s.

This study was qualitative. It analyzes how the photographs portray race. The only aspect that is quantitative is the amount of publications that is analyzed. The races that were covered in this study were Native Americans, Japanese-Americans, African-Americans, and Muslim-Americans. Another aspect how analyzing publications frames of references were done; “1) syntactic structures, or how words or phrases are placed; (2) script structures, or the perceived newsworthiness of the event; (3) thematic structures, or the use of causal statements to emphasize blame; and (4) rhetorical structures, or the stylistic choices made by journalists.”

The writer does not insert herself into the story. She refers to publications and how they framed races to the American public, specifically the elite, white, class of Americans. She also describes on how the publications use certain stylistic qualities to make the race or culture in question not seem like “real” or “actual” Americans.

One limiting expression in the article is; “While the use of media framing has been prevalent for centuries, it was only more recently that the tactics employed by journalists have come under the close scrutiny of researchers.” This generalized statement helps set up her next couple statements toward propaganda in WWI aimed at different cultures in the U.S.

Introductions and Conclusions

For this wiki post I chose the article Image Reparation Strategies in Sports: Media Analysis of Kobe Bryant and Barry Bonds. This article was written by Jennifer Kennedy. The introduction for this article is very short. In it the author is explaining the knowledge deficit of this subject she says “A review of literature demonstrates that little research has been published in the realm of image repair strategies of Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), and National Football League (NFL) Players. This paper serves to inform sports publications professionals of appropriate strategies to use in the image repair and restoration process following a scandal.” She is stating here the lack of knowledge that is in the field and then explains what knowledge she is hoping to bring.

In part of the author introduction she asks these questions “Why do we forgive some athletes and not others? From what types of scandals is it easier for an athlete to recover? What mitigating circumstances must exist for an athlete to be forgiven? How should athletes respond when involved in a negative situation?” at the end of the article she answers these questions in separate paragraphs. The conclusion does a good job of recapping all of the knowledge that was learned in this article and answering all of the questions that where asked. There was not much for limiting expressing and moralizing statements in this article.

Summary of Good Academic Writing in Elon Journal

My paper gives you a glimpse into the United States wartime propaganda machine. It shows you the buildup and the actions it took to sway the American public to support the war via war bonds, conserving food, or just believing that the American way of life was better. This was achieved through a wide variety of mediums.

While looking through other papers in the Elon Journal, I recognized how thorough the writing was. Every fact was sourced and in turn giving credibility to the paper. The writers thoughts flow and are understood with relative ease because of the constant revising to their papers.

I have tried to meet those standards by getting as much information as possible. And with more information, I will then be able to sift through it and decide what is important to my paper.

Questions For Rough Draft
1. What improvements could be made?
2. Is there anything that needs to be explained better?
3. I am going to drop the Vietnam aspect, agree/disagree?

TIME

Time magazine has a circulation of 25 million readers. Time also has headquarters worldwide for different editions. Time prints articles that are already on the public’s mind, but they do a massive overview of the topic, and in a lot of cases use graphics to help emphasize their point (a timeline being one of the graphics).

One article I found titled “None Dare Call It Propaganda” written by Mark Thompson discusses the American Forces Press service and how it’s a “tad disconcerting with the flurry of taxpayer-funded stories” (Thompson, 2013). The article is aimed at two audiences, the public, and military personal. He goes into on programs that going to affected and how some soldiers are going to be furloughed.

I think my topic would fit in well because it is not as if propaganda is something new, but rather has been a constant force in our everyday lives. I could remind people that propaganda is still being used, just in more covert ways such as lobbyists and special interest groups, but show how their agendas are being filtered through government.

Project 2 Revision Plan

PART 1

Time magazine’s first issue hit the shelves on March 3, 1923. Time magazine is based out of New York, NY and is published weekly.

Time’s audience according to its own reader profile claims that the median age of its readers is 48, 55% male readers ad 45% female readers, and has a total circulation in the U.S. of 17,525,000.

My topic will show how the United States government spreads its agenda/message in the 21st century. The purpose will be to remind the America people to not take information directly to heart. I’ll show how the Obama Administration is trying to be the most accessible administration history by using applications such as twitter and YouTube.

Wiki

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My publication for Project 3 will be a blog/editorial for Wired magazine or an online article for Rolling Stone.

One aspect of my article that goes with online blogs is that I will have embedded videos highlighting first-person shooter war video games. I will be direct and to the point with the video games I use for example. I will most likely list the video games one by one.

My audience will be gamers and people that have an interest as to why war type video games are so popular. The other types of people that will be interested are going to be an older generation that may despise these types of video games (my father). I will interview a couple people to ask them why they love these video games so much and what they get out of them personally.

The purpose of the article will be to show how these video games are marketed. I will try to explain why people enjoy or dislike these video games. My opinion will be present in the article. I want people to realize that real war isn’t all fun and games and get peoples thoughts on that.

The main aspect that will be present in Project 3 from my last two projects will be propaganda (commercials). Right now it is kind of up in the air as to how this article will be different or similar than my first two. I think after a little planning and drafting I will have a better grasp as to what I am trying to get across.